The path that lies ahead for the Cassini-Huygens mission is indicated in
this image which illustrates where the spacecraft will be just 27 days
from now, when it arrives at Saturn and crosses the ring plane 33 minutes
before performing its critical orbital insertion maneuver.
The X indicates the point where Cassini will pierce the ring plane on
June 30, 2004, going from south to north of the ring plane, 33 minutes
before the main engine fires to begin orbital insertion. The indicated
point is between the narrow F-ring on the left and Saturn's tenuous
G-ring which is too faint to be seen in this exposure.
The image was taken on May 11, 2004 when the spacecraft was 26.3 million
kilometers (16.3 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 158 kilometers
(98 miles) per pixel. Moons visible in this image: Janus (181 kilometers
or 113 miles across), one of the co-orbital moons; Pandora (84 kilometers
or 52 miles across), one of the F ring shepherding moons; and Enceladus
(499 kilometers or 310 miles across), a moon which may be heated from
within and thus have a liquid sub-surface ocean.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space
Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras,
were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based
at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit,
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page,
http://ciclops.org.
